


Bleeding me dry

by Rangergirl3



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [15]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt not much comfort, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Medical Experimentation, Medical Torture, Medical Trauma, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Protective Team, So much angst, Team Voltron is Pissed, Vivisection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 04:50:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20252470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rangergirl3/pseuds/Rangergirl3
Summary: Keith is both human and part-Galra.While people are understandably curious as to why he seems so human, a few Galra take extreme measures to satiate their curiosity.Shiro makes them regret it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Brushes-of-sage requested: Can I request vivisection for Keith either at the hands of ‘slightly’ ambitious human scientists or group of people against the Galra, or whichever angsty-er situation comes to mind? I absolutely love your writing (especially for some Keith angst and whump - you’re amazing! 🤗)

When Keith opens his eyes, he’s in some kind of white room.

_That's weird. _

_Hadn't he been in Red's cockpit when -_

His heart leaps into overdrive. 

_The battle._

Memories catch up to him, confused and spiked with adrenaline.

_That giant space creature. _

The final hit from its arm, shearing the Red Lion away from the rest of - 

_The team._

His team. 

_Where is his team?_

* * *

His head aches.

_Forget about that. Find the others. Where are they?_

He tries to sit up, fails. He doesn't understand why he can't sit up.

_Not important. Just look around, see if they're nearby._

When Keith opens his eyes, there are two figures standing over him, but he can’t make out their faces. They're wearing outfits made out of some kind of white material.

_The lights are too bright._

Just for a second, hope blazes in his chest.

_Allura? Coran?_

Then one of the dim figures leans forwards, and Keith realizes that it's no one he knows. It's not even human.

_Oh, no._

He's on a Galra ship_._

_Fear chokes him, freezes him into place._

The Galra, seeing the fear in Keith's eyes, chuckles and straightens back up.

"Let Commander Haxun know the specimen is awake."

At the name, Keith tries to rise again, only to realize that he's incapable of movement.

_He's strapped to an operating table._

No.

_Please, **no**._

Keith tries, again, to sit up, to move, to struggle, to do _anything_, but it's hopeless. His breathing picks up, loud in his ears. 

_When did they start ringing?_

"It's in some kind of distress," the second Galra says. She's holding some kind of data pad in her clawed fingers, and she's just - looking down at him like he's a science experiment, instead of a living, breathing person.

"Then give it another dose of sedative," the first Galra says, waving a hand in a curt gesture of impatience. "It almost took two of my claws off last time it started doing this."

_**Last** time?_

The second Galra puts down her data pad and picks up a syringe. The needle glints in the light.

_No, no, no -_

Keith looks frantically around him, trying to see something, anything that might tell him how long he's been here.

_Where are the others? Were they caught too?_

The needle digs into his skin. The momentary discomfort is more than enough to pull his attention back to whatever chemical the female Galra has injected him with.

_No. No. **No**._

Keith wrenches at the metal cuffs locked into place around his wrists, his ankles, but nothing happens.

_The room grows hazy._

"Don't struggle," the second Galra tells him. "It'll only make the sedative less effective."

Panting for air, Keith turns his head towards his right, ignoring her words.

_The drug is already taking effect. It takes almost a full second for his eyes to focus on the Galra standing next to him._

The first Galra's attention is already turned away from him, back onto the screens that Keith can't see.

Even so, Keith tries to crane his neck to one side, so that maybe,_ somehow,_ he can get information.

The female Galra sighs as she picks up her data pad again.

"Geltorix?"

The male Galra raises his head, visibly annoyed.

"_What_, Ursa?"

"It's fighting the sedative again."

Geltorix sighs, rolls his eyes, and comes to stand by Ursa once again.

"You aren't getting out of here," he tells Keith, his words crisp and brittle. "So stop trying to-"

Keith shakes his head from side to side.

_No, they don't understand, he has to find his friends, he **has** to. _

But the sedative makes it almost impossible to form words, let alone make himself understood.

"It's stubborn," Ursa comments as she begins to enter information into her data pad once more. "Think that's the human side coming out?"

Geltorix shrugs. "No idea. Though Champion was remarkably resilient, at least in the beginning. Or so I've been told. He really was a remarkable specimen."

Ursa types something down on her data pad. "True."

Keith's heart goes cold.

_These must be the same Galra ship that experimented on Shiro, during his year as their prisoner._

The final coherent thought that crosses Keith's mind is a grim question, one that he already knows the answer to.

_What are they going to do to me?_

* * *

* * *

Shiro slammed his mechanical shoulder against the door of the cell. There were a few benefits to having a mechanical arm, and one of them was that it could take a lot more punishment than his remaining human arm.

There was shouting in the hallway outside of their cell, and the alarms kept blaring.

Images flashed through Shiro's mind at the sound, as they had been ever since this nightmare had begun what felt like years ago.

* * *

The alarms grew higher in pitch and tone, shrill and painful. The memories screamed inside Shiro's mind, threatening to drown him.

_Purple light. Black mists. Red blood, everywhere. _

Shiro roared, and this time, when his shoulder slammed against the door, it left a dent.

_Searing pain in his shoulder, pounding in time with his heartbeat. Never-ending. Relentless. _

He wasn't going to stop fighting. Not now. Not ever.

_Haggar's serrated smile as she ran a claw-tipped finger down the side of his face._

Shiro took two steps back, then brought his metal forearm down on the door's metal with enough force to shatter the metal cuff the guards had secured to his prosthetic.

_Her fingers, cold as death, coming to rest underneath his chin as she forced him to look back into her eyes._

He activated the weapons setting, and, with one motion, punched through the steel door as if it were made out of cardboard.

_ "**Now** you are worthy -" _

He sliced upwards through the door, and in moments, had made it out of the isolation cell. 

_ "- of the name Champion." _

* * *

Then the flashback was over, and Shiro found himself standing amid the wreckage of what once had been five sentries. Before he'd gone twenty paces, he'd come across a patrol and sliced them into pieces.

_ _Good._ _

Shiro stepped over the wreckage and continued on his way. In passing, he reached down, yanked an arm off of one the dismembered mechanical sentries, a laser gun from another, and continued down the hall.

_He's not an idiot._

He knows that he will definitely have nightmares about this later, but first, he has a job to do.

_Get to Keith, then get back to the Castle. _

Allowing himself to feel the full horror from the flashbacks could _fucking_ _wait_ until that was **_done_**. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sedative gradually wears off.

Thanks to the sedative still pumping through his system, Keith doesn't fully understand where he is, or what's going on.

All he knows is that he's afraid, and alone, and more than anything else, he wishes he could get away from here.

_But he can't._

He's on some sort of table.

_He can't move._

Someone tugs on his hair, making him face the ceiling.

_Everything's too bright._

He has no choice but to let them move him as they will.

_He **hates** it._

Something - a strap, maybe - is pulled tight over his forehead. 

_He can't even lift his head up now._

Voices converse around him.

_They're saying something about getting started._

Unfamiliar hands pull another strap tight across his chest, and he can't help but whimper in protest as it bites into his skin. The sound is weak, but it evokes a response.

"Ursa, I thought you sedated it."

The second voice is annoyed, almost terse.

"I _did_, Geltorix. Apparently it has some kind of natural resilience to the drug."

Geltorix sighs, and a few seconds later, Keith senses movement near his knees.

"Well then, it seems we'll need additional measures to ensure a proper examination, doesn't it?"

Keith can't lift his head up, not even enough to see which of them ties off another restraint, this time across his hips.

Ursa's reply is frosty.

"_Thank_ you, Geltorix. I know _perfectly_ well what is needed. There was no need to fetch it for me."

Keith's heartbeat raises steadily in growing fear, and when a pair of hands grip his face, he twists from side to side as best he can.

"Stop _squirming_," Geltorix snaps. "We're trying to do important scientific research here-"

Keith tries to bite the Galra scientist, but only succeeds in making Geltorix let out a yelp and let go of Keith's face.

Ursa steps forwards. When she comes into Keith's line of sight, he sees she's almost smirking.

"_Here_," she says, much too sweetly for it to be genuine. "Let _me_, Geltorix."

Geltorix mutters something about female scientists being insufferable, but retreats. Keith is left looking up into the female scientist's eyes, and something about the half-interested, half-amused look in her eyes makes his skin crawl.

She taps him on the chin, her smirk widening when he tries and fails to recoil away from her touch.

"Open wide," she says. "Can't have you biting us while we're working, now, can we?" 

He growls at her. The sedative's effects may be fading faster than expected, but even if they weren't, he wasn't just going to obey an order like that. He's a _person_, not a -

One of her hands shoots out and clamps down over the lower half of his face with a startling amount of strength. He tries to throw off her grip, but he's helpless, pinned down, strapped into place and unable to do so much as look away from her.

Her smile still hasn't reached her eyes.

"Do it," she says, softly, "or I'll smother you."

Keith's lungs scream for air. He wants to breathe. He _needs_ to breathe.

_But at what cost? What is she going to do to him?_

In the end, the desperate need for air wins. 

Even then, Ursa keeps her hand pressed down over Keith's nose and mouth, still smiling that empty smile as he starts to thrash in place, chest heaving uselessly for air he cannot reach.

_Finally_, she allows him to breathe. Even as he gulps down air, tears rolling down his face, she's wedged something between his teeth and bolted it into place behind his head.

It takes Keith a second to realize what it is, and when the horrible truth hits him, he can't help but let out a broken sob, followed by another, and then another. 

It's a muzzle.

A fucking _muzzle_.

_He's not a person to them._

_How could he be?_

_He's **nothing**._

* * *

Ursa sits back, surveying her handiwork with no small amount of satisfaction.

"_There_," she says, much too cheerfully. Her eyes still gleam with dark delight at the obvious distress she's inflicted. "That's _much_ better." She reaches out a hand and pats the side of Keith's face a few times, as if praising a dog for good behavior. 

The Red Paladin's cheeks flush scarlet with shame, and he drops his gaze to the floor.

Geltorix coughs, somewhat pointedly. 

"If you've had your _fun_, Ursa?" he says. "We should begin."

Ursa rolls her eyes at her colleague's words, but she stands back up and retrives her datapad. She types in information speedily, speaking over her shoulder as she does so.

"Do you want to do the cutting, or shall I?"

Geltorix wrinkles his nose in distaste. "I suppose I may as well. You're faster at inputing the data, and you can assist me if it - well. Gets messy."

He notices the way Keith's muscles go rigid in terror, and he snorts in what can only be dark humor.

"Oh, look, Ursa, it can understand what we're saying. How truly unfortunate."

She flicks a speck of dust from her lab coat.

"Hardly surprising, Geltorix. The humans may be a far inferior species to our own, but don't forget, it's a half-breed. Undoubtedly some of the higher functions of the brain continue to function, even with the sedative in full operation."

Geltorix blinks. "Doesn't that mean it'll be awake throughout the procedure?"

Ursa shrugs. "Doesn't matter. It's not going anywhere."

* * *

Keith has no choice but to listen to them talk about procedure and where to start as if he's some kind of lab dissection project.

When Geltorix cuts away the shoulders and chest of Keith's flightsuit, the Red Paladin begins to shiver. He can't help it. The cold air makes his skin prickle.

A hand descends upon the muzzle and pulls it sharply upward, putting enough strain on Keith's neck to make him give a muffled whine of startled discomfort.

"Stop. Moving." Geltorix hisses into his ear. "Honestly, the way it carries on, you'd think it -"

The Galra breaks off mid-sentence, the words devolving into annoyed mutterings and calculations. He releases his hold on the muzzle, and the back of Keith's head hits the operating table's surface with a thump. It hurts, but Keith closes his eyes and tries his best not to cry.

_He doesn't want this._

Then Ursa comes over again, and she hums to herself as she takes a pen and draws lines across Keith's skin, marking where the incisions will be. He doesn't dare to do so much as twitch until she finishes. Then she resumes tapping the keys on her data tablet, as if intent on completing a project in time for the end of the semester.

* * *

"The sedative will wear off soon," she says over her shoulder to Geltorix. "We should begin now. Get the information we can while it can still respond to calculated stimuli."

The complete and utter absence of compassion or empathy is much, _much_ worse than the promise of physical pain.

Keith can't help but begin to tremble. 

_He doesn't want to be awake when they start cutting into him._

Geltorix hums in agreement, coming to stand by Keith's head. The male Galra is holding a thin, serrated blade.

"Starting now. Begin recording."

Keith's heart almost stops beating, and in that moment, he wishes he were already dead.

_They're **recording** this?_

Ursa taps a button on her data pad, and a tiny green light appears in the far corner of the room, right where the ceiling meets the wall. 

"Recording," she chirrups, entirely too cheerful at the prospect of filming someone's vivisection in real time.

_But then, they doesn't see him as a person, do they?_

Against Keith's will, a few more tears trickle down his cheeks, but he does his best to remain as silent as possible, and keep his gaze fixed on the ceiling.

* * *

_He doesn't want to be here._

He wants his team.

He wants Shiro.

He wants to argue with Lance and be confused by Coran's analogies and walk with Allura and spar with Pidge and talk with Shiro and fly Red and never, ever, _ever_ be anywhere as lonely or terrifying or dead as this cold white room.

He wants to go _home_.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro arrives.

Shiro opens the door to the labratory with the still-sparking mechanical sentry's hand. Once inside, he uses it to initiate a lockdown procedure reboot. 

It happened once, the last time he was in a lab like this.

There was a lot of technical jargon that Pidge had, no doubt, gone over with over hours with Matt, but together, they had agreed on one thing:

Nothing was getting through that door anytime soon.

Having fulfilled its primary function, the Black Paladin then uses the sentry's mechanical hand as a projectile weapon, to startle and discombobulate the two scientists who are about to perform experiments on Keith.

Then Shiro takes aim with the laser gun and fires twice - one, two. The first shot brings down the Galra who had just begun to cut deeply into Keith's left shoulder. The second shot misses the female Galra scientist by inches as she dives behind the operating table, dropping her data pad and going for her blaster even as she takes cover.

She draws her blaster too quickly. As she fumbles for a better grip, Shiro crosses the room in four running strides. The female scientist sees him coming towards her and scrabbles into a sitting position, bringing her blaster to aim towards the defenseless boy on the table, intending to use him as a hostage.

Shiro doesn't hesitate. 

He aims his own laser gun and fires without hesitation.

It's a shot Lance himself would be proud of. Ursa crumples to the ground, dead as dust.

Before she hits the floor, Shiro's already at Keith's side.

* * *

* * *

_Moments before_

As the knife's serrated edge dug into his left shoulder, Keith clenched his jaw, curled his fingers into fists, and squeezed his eyes tight shut.

He would do everything he could not to scream.

He wasn't a thing.

He was a _person_.

He'd keep fighting to the end, even if no one knew that he had except himself.

Victory or death might be the Galra way, but it wasn't his. _Not anymore._

Then, mid-word, Geltorix's voice suddenly cuts out, and after a few laser gun blasts, there's - 

"_Keith_!"

Footsteps, thudding closer.

Keith tenses at the sounds. It's so _loud_.

"Hang on, buddy, I got you."

_...Shiro...?_

Hands, careful and kind, start unlocking the cuffs fastened around Keith's wrists and ankles.

But Keith doesn't dare move. He just stays there, frozen in place, hardly daring to breathe. 

This might just be a trick. _Scientists did that with test subjects, right, they tricked them into thinking they were escaping and took away any hope that -_

The voice again, and more than anything, Keith wants it to be his friend. 

"Almost there, okay? I'll find a way to get that - uh, thing off of your face really soon, all right?"

In that moment, the Red Paladin opens his eyes just in time to see Shiro's glowing purple fingers slice through the last of the cuffs holding him in place, but Keith's not free yet. The muzzle is still buckled into place behind his head, and the straps are still cinched tight across his body.

His shoulder hurts. The cut Geltorix made is only about three inches long, but it's deep, and Keith is fairly certain it was never meant to be sewn back up again.

_They'd just been going to - _

Almost immediately, Keith starts shaking from the cold, but most of all, from the full realization of what he'd narrowly escaped.

_They had never meant for him to survive._

He'd almost been -

* * *

Shiro's concentration is focused on keeping the glowing-hot metal from touching Keith's skin as he cuts through the straps holding his friend to the operating table, so he doesn't see it when Keith looks up at him. 

_"...'iro?"_

It's what Keith tries to say, but the muzzle gets in the way, and it's barely more than a whisper.

Shiro hears it, though.

That tiny, nearly inaudible whimper can only mean one thing.

Keith is _terrified_.

Shiro immediately helps Keith sit up, being careful not to put too much pressure on Keith's injured shoulder, and grabs two clean white coats off of a nearby desk chair, wrapping one around his glowing Galra arm, so that the hot metal doesn't burn Keith by accident. Then he drapes the other one around his friend's shoulders and pulling him into a one-armed hug. 

"I'm here."

Keith is shaking as if he might have a seizure. The edges of the metal muzzle dig painfully into Shiro's shoulder, but he ignores it. 

"I'm here, Keith. You're here. We're both okay."

Keith doesn't answer.

Shiro waits for almost a minute, then asks, as gently as he can, "Hey, I think I know how to get that - that thing off. You want me to do that now?"

Keith nods. Shiro hugs him closer.

"Okay. Just - hold still, all right?"

Keith nods, jerkily this time, like he's close to losing it completely.

Shiro doesn't blame him in the slightest.

He'd hated the muzzles too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! <3 Comments are always wonderful, especially when you mention a line or a phrase or even just a moment that really hit you hard :-) <3
> 
> I'm on Tumblr - come say hi! :D

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always loved! <3 Especially if you tell me which section or phrase that hit you the hardest! <3
> 
> I'm on Tumblr - come say hi! <3


End file.
